Why Greece’s Parliament Backed Recognising Palestine in 2015

Russia to Provide Up to $5.3Mln in Humanitarian Aid to Palestine

Alexis Tsipras, then prime minister of Greece (right), and Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas at a joint press conference in Athens on 21 December 2015. Photo: AFP/Getty Images

On 22 December 2015 the Hellenic Parliament voted unanimously to call on the Greek government to recognise the State of Palestine, with Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas watching from the chamber. It was a striking show of cross-party agreement in a deeply divided parliament. But it was not, by itself, recognition by the Greek state: the vote was a non-binding recommendation, and more than ten years later Greece has still not formally recognised Palestine.

This article explains what the vote did and did not do, how it fitted into a wider European wave of symbolic recognitions in 2014 and 2015, and how the picture has changed since.

What the Greek parliament decided

The vote took place during an official visit by Abbas to Athens. According to the record summarised on Wikipedia, MPs recommended full recognition of a Palestinian state on the lines of 4 June 1967, before the Six-Day War, with East Jerusalem as its capital, and asked the government to act on that recommendation.

Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, whose left-wing Syriza party had promised a more pro-Palestinian foreign policy, presented the vote as a step towards formal recognition at a later, “appropriate” moment. Reports at the time also said Greece would start using the name “Palestine” instead of “Palestinian Authority” in official documents, a change in wording rather than in legal status.

The key distinction is between a parliament and a state. In Greece, as in most democracies, recognising another state is a decision of the executive. A parliamentary resolution can urge it, but it does not establish diplomatic relations, open an embassy or change treaties. Palestine continues to have a diplomatic representation office in Athens, not an embassy, and Greece’s consulate general in Jerusalem handles its relations with the Palestinian authorities.

Why Greece moved carefully

Greece has long had close ties with the Palestinian cause. It established diplomatic relations with the Palestine Liberation Organization in 1981, and under Andreas Papandreou in the 1980s it took a more critical line towards Israel than any other European Community government. Greece only extended full de jure recognition to Israel in 1990.

By 2015, however, Greek foreign policy was also building a strategic partnership with Israel and Cyprus covering energy, defence and tourism in the eastern Mediterranean. That balance helps explain why the government welcomed the parliament’s message but held back from taking the formal legal step.

Israel’s reaction showed what was at stake. Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely said the decision “leads nowhere” and had no practical significance, a sign that Israel saw the resolution as symbolic rather than binding.

Part of a wider European wave

The Greek vote came at the end of a period in which several European parliaments and governments made gestures towards Palestinian statehood after peace talks collapsed in 2014:

Sweden became the first major Western European country to formally recognise Palestine, on 30 October 2014, while already a member of the EU.
The British and French parliaments passed non-binding motions in late 2014 urging their governments to recognise Palestine. Their governments did not act on them at the time.
The Holy See was already treating Palestine as a state, and Wikipedia’s listing dates its recognition to February 2013.
At the United Nations, Palestine had been upgraded to non-member observer state status in November 2012. On 10 September 2015 the General Assembly voted to allow the flags of observer states to fly at UN headquarters, and the Palestinian flag was raised there for the first time later that month.

Seen in that context, the Greek resolution was one of several parliamentary signals in Europe, rather than a lone move.

Russia’s aid pledge in the same month

Around the same time, Russian state media reported that Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev had signed a decree instructing the Foreign Ministry to provide up to 5.3 million US dollars in humanitarian aid to the Palestinians, to be delivered by the end of 2015 in coordination with Palestinian authorities. The decree was reported by Sputnik citing Russia’s official legal information portal; this site has not independently confirmed how much of the aid was delivered.

Russia had recognised the State of Palestine back in 1988, as the Soviet Union, when the Palestine Liberation Organization first declared independence. That puts it among the large group of countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America and Eastern Europe that recognised Palestine decades before Western Europe began to move.

Recognition ten years later

The question returned to centre stage in 2025, during the war in Gaza. On 21 September 2025 the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and Portugal formally recognised the State of Palestine. France, Luxembourg, Malta, Monaco and Andorra followed the next day at the United Nations, and San Marino on 23 September. By then, 157 of the 193 UN member states recognised Palestine, just over 81 percent.

Greece was not among them. Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said on 7 September 2025 that Greece would recognise Palestinian statehood “at the right time”, and Greek officials have framed the issue as one of timing, tied to a negotiated settlement under UN auspices, rather than of principle. Greek public opinion has continued to show sympathy for the Palestinians; in May 2025, for example, 33 Greek municipalities raised the Palestinian flag to mark the anniversary of the Nakba.

Key terms, explained

Recognition is a formal act by a state’s government accepting another entity as a sovereign state. It usually leads to full diplomatic relations and embassies.
A parliamentary motion on recognition expresses the will of lawmakers but is normally not binding on the government.
The 1967 lines are the ceasefire lines before the June 1967 war, when Israel took control of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza. Most proposals for a two-state solution use them as the starting point for borders.
Observer state status at the UN lets Palestine take part in General Assembly debates and join some UN bodies and treaties, but not vote in the Assembly.

The December 2015 vote remains an accurate snapshot of Greece’s position: strong political sympathy, a clear statement of support for a Palestinian state on the 1967 lines, and a government that has so far chosen to wait for what it sees as the right moment.

Sources: Wikipedia: Greece–Palestine relations; Wikipedia: International recognition of Palestine; original reports: RT and Sputnik (Russian state media). Photo: AFP/Getty Images.

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